


The Martians

by AgentJX7



Category: Homestuck, The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - The Martian, Castaways, Fluff, Humanstuck, I promise all those characters will be in it eventually, Mars, Multi, NASA, Nepeta and Karkat are stranded on Mars, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Survival Tactics, Will add ship tags as they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-07 14:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7718008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentJX7/pseuds/AgentJX7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m pretty much fucked. </p><p>That’s my expert opinion.</p><p>Fucked.</p><p>Six days into what should have been the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare. Maybe they’ll have a national day of mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say “Karkat Vantas is one of only two humans to have died on Mars.” I say one of two because Nepeta is here with me. She’s alive.</p><p>Anyway, it’d be right. We are the only humans to die on Mars, just not on Sol 6 like everyone thinks.</p><p>If the oxygenator breaks down, we'll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks, we'll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, we'll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen, we’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.</p><p>So yeah. We’re fucked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

LOG ENTRY: VANTAS

SOL 6

I’m pretty much fucked. 

That’s my expert opinion.

Fucked.

Six days into what should have been the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare.

I don’t even know who’ll find this. I guess someone will eventually, maybe a hundred years from now.

Just for the record, I didn’t die on Sol 6. The rest of the crew thinks I did, and not without reason. I mean, the last thing they saw was me being blown off in the wind, impaled on the fucking transmission antenna, shortly before my depressurization alarm went off and my bio-signs dropped to zero. Maybe they’ll have a national day of mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say “Karkat Vantas is one of only two humans to have died on Mars.” I say one of two because Nepeta is here with me. She’s alive.

Anyway, it’d be right. We are the only humans to die on Mars, just not on Sol 6 like everyone thinks. 

Nepeta is sleeping right now. Her shoulder got speared pretty bad, but hey, so did my torso.

I guess I should explain how we’re alive. When we got speared, there was a lot of blood (duh). The water in the blood quickly boiled off, leaving a bunch of gunk that quickly accumulated enough to reduce the leaks to a manageable size. Unfortunately for us, the antenna’s points managed to spear my bio-monitor directly, and cut the line feeding power to and transmitting data from Nepeta’s. Combine that with the pressure alarm, and being thrown down the hill with a giant antenna stuck through you, and it would seem a pretty safe bet to assume we died.

Thank god I’m not a gambler.

The Hab got pretty shaken up in the storm, but everything inside it seems to work ok. For now. This whole setup was designed to last, maximum, 63 days.

If the oxygenator breaks down, we'll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks, we'll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, we'll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen, we’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.

So yeah. We’re fucked.

LOG ENTRY: LEIJON

SOL 6

I really don’t want to think about how we ended up in this situation. The storm, I mean. I never liked big storms back on Earth, so when they told me that in order to go to Mars I would have to be in a tent with 150 KPH winds blasting the sides with sand, it made me a little nervous.

“We’re going to put you on top of a bomb, explode you into orbit, then put you in a can that vents radioactive gas out the back, and send you 48,678,219 miles away from everything else, to a place where you need an airtight suit to breathe and not implode.” And what made me nervous were the sandstorms.

All the others told me that the storms were the least of my worries. Well, who’s laughing now, fuckers?

Not me. I’m the one who’s stuck on Mars. Yay.

The Leo program was such a cool opportunity. First attempts to see if a Mars colony is a viable option. And, you know, youngest astronauts ever has a wonderful ring to it.

The basic idea was to send a large group- eight, to be exact- to Mars, to explore how it affected people living in that space together for an extended period. Leo VI was supposed to be on Mars for a whole year. Why couldn’t we have their food reserves?

We were on- I guess, are on- Leo III. Our big experiment was Karkat, me, John, and Roxy. John and Roxy are 21, me and Karkat are 16. They wanted to see if having kids and young adults in space was an actual option, or if it’ll have to wait until space travel is way safer. My money’s on the second one, at least after this.

God, my mother must be beside herself with grief. I wish she knew I’m still alive.

Sure, I’m probably not gonna stay that way for long, but at least I am right now.

I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for anyone who isn’t a scientist who might be watching this. We get up to the Hermes using a normal rocket, like every other space mission ever. Then we spend a few days getting used to space and getting the rest of our food and supplies, then we ship out for Mars. I don’t really want to reminisce right now, but it was fun, to say the least. Then we got down to mars in the MDV, which is basically a glorified tin can whose only purpose is to get twelve humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing them. Hey, it worked.

Now, the secret to Mars missions is pre-launching your stuff. When we got up here, all the food and equipment was already here, along with the Mars Ascent Vehicle (or MAV). The MAV has a really cool way of making fuel, but I don’t feel like getting into that now. It’s a real shame we never got to launch in it. You can imagine my disappointment when I found out it was gone.

The other depressing thing is that all our redundant communications systems were in the MAV. Our main source of communications was the antenna, which is no longer operable due to being ripped from the Hab and then impaling two teenagers on its various needles. And all the others need the MAV to work. When the crew left, they (surprise!) took the MAV, and all our comms. So we’re stranded, with absolutely no way to contact anyone. 

I think we really might be fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically just chapter one in its original form. Chapter Two was also largely unedited, and will be posted soon. Chapters Three and Four need to be completely overhauled to cut down on quotes, and could take a while.


	2. Chapter 2

SOL 7

Okay, I’ve had a good night’s sleep and things don’t seem as hopeless as they did yesterday. I did an inventory of our supplies and a quick EVA to check on the outside equipment. Here’s where we’re at:

Leo III was set to last 63 days. They launched 86 days of food, so in case one of the probes broke down or crashed there would still be enough. We were six days in when all hell broke loose, so there’s enough food to feed eight people for eighty days, or two people for 320 days. And that’s without rationing.

We have plenty of EVA suits and filters, so that’s great. I checked outside next. The MDV’s parachute got picked up by the wind and dragged it around, so it’s useless as a vehicle. Not that it would have been very useful anyway. The thrusters can’t even lift its own weight. Still, if we need spare parts for something it’s worth checking out. 

The solar panels were covered with dust from the storm, but I swept them off and they jumped back to full efficiency. Whatever we plan to do, we’re going to have more than enough power to do it.

Both rovers are up and running. All systems go there. So, after careful consideration, me and Karkat have decided to drive back to Earth. Yay! 

Actually, Karkat’s still asleep. Turns out being stabbed through the abdomen with a radio antenna takes a lot out of you.

The water reclaimer and oxygenator are still working fine, which means no need to worry about suffocating or running out of water any time soon. Of course, if either of those break, it will be bad. But let’s cross that bridge if we come to it. 

We also have plenty of medicine, medical equipment, and vitamins. So I guess we won’t be at risk from injury or nutritional problems, but all the vitamins in the world can’t stop me from starving to death. 

The medical area also has morphine for emergencies. There’s enough there for a lethal dose or two and then some, and I have no intention of slowly starving to death. If it comes to that, I’ll take an easier way out. I’ll say that much.

We all had a few specialities on the mission. I’m a botanist, and while we were up there John gave me some lessons in some of the more advanced medical programs. And I’ve always had an… affinity for group dynamics and the like, which should be handy if Karkat turns out to be a major douchebag. I hope not. I hate it when cute people turn out to be douchebags.

I really shouldn’t have said that. Thank god he can’t get at my recordings.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking longer term. Leo IV was set to arrive at Schiaparelli Crater in four years. Schiaparelli is 3200 kilometers away from the Hab, and we have no way to get there, and that’s not even the real kicker. Even if we had a way to get there, how we survive for four years on a year’s worth of food is an excellent question. Hopefully one with a good answer. I’ll think more about it when I’m less tired and the puncture wound in my shoulder hurts less.

VANTAS

I woke up to a rather enthusiastic report from Nepeta informing me that everything still works, except for the communications (on account of being ripped off the Hab by wind and then spearing two children) and the MAV (on account of it being gone). She also calculated that we have a year of food, which is great because it means that the Leo IV will only miss us by three years instead of four. Helpful.

In case NASA ever finds this log, I want to detail how we survived the storm so they can teach future astronauts about it. Also, I want to make it very clear to the rest of the crew, _especially_ Commander Harley, that it was not their fault. 

So during the storm, we were reading wind gusting up to 175 KPH. The MAV is in danger of tipping at 150, so understandably, NASA was a little nervous. They gave Harley the order to scrub the mission, so we suited up and made a break for the MAV. In the storm, the comms dish next to the Hab acted like a parachute, ripping the dish from its foundations and carrying it along with the torrent. Along the way, it crashed through the reception antenna array. One of those long, thin needles slammed into me like a bullet, and I vaguely remember seeing the same thing happen to Nepeta. It was the worst pain of my entire life, and then I felt the wind get pulled out of me and my ears pop as my suit depressurized. The last thing I saw was Roxy, reaching out for me helplessly. 

I awoke to the oxygen alarm in my suit, a steady obnoxious beeping that eventually roused me from a profound desire to just fucking die. The storm was over, and I was facedown in a sandbank. When I got my thoughts together, I began to wonder why I wasn’t more dead.

The antenna had enough force to punch through the suit and my side, but my pelvis stopped it. First time anything good has resulted from my pelvic sorcery.

That was a stupid joke, but I don’t care. Who’s gonna call me on it, the fucking rocks?

Where was I? Right, there was a hole in my suit (and a hole in me) from where the antenna punched through. The force of the impact and the wind, which was still pulling on the dish, had pulled us down the hill. The angle I had landed at put a lot of torque on the hole, which made a very weak seal. The blood did the thing I talked about yesterday- water boiled off, the leftover protein gunk sealed the breach enough to keep me from, you know, imploding.

The suit did its job admirably. It detected the drop in pressure, and started to constantly flood itself with air from my nitrogen tank to equalize. Once the leak became manageable, it only had to trickle new air in slowly the relieve the air lost.

After a while, the CO2 (carbon dioxide) absorbers in the suit were expended. That’s really the limiting factor of life support and EVAs. Not the amount of oxygen you bring with you, but the amount of CO2 you can remove. In the Hab, we had the Oxygenator, a large piece of equipment that could break CO2 apart and give the oxygen back. But the Oxygenator is a huge fuckin’ machine. It must weigh close to two hundred pounds. Spacesuits have to be portable, so they use a simple chemical absorption process with expendable filters. I’d been asleep long enough that my filters were useless.

The suit saw this problem and moved into an emergency mode the engineers call “bloodletting”. Having no way to separate out the CO2, the suit deliberately vented air to the Martian atmosphere, then backfilled with nitrogen. Between the breach and the bloodletting, it quickly ran out of nitrogen. All it had left was my oxygen tank.

So it did the only thing it could to keep me alive. It started back-filling with pure oxygen. I now risked dying from oxygen toxicity, as the excessively high amount of oxygen threatened to burn up my nervous system, lungs, and eyes. An ironic death for someone with a leaky spacesuit: too much oxygen.

Every step of the way would have had beeping alarms, alerts, and warnings. But it was the high-oxygen warning that woke me.

I knew how to deal with a breach, but there was a huge antenna stuck in my torso. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t seal the breach (strongest glue known to man + open wound + metal rod = bad for Karkat) until I pulled the antenna out. I cut the wires connecting the part of the antenna that was stuck in me to the rest of the array, and prepared to make a run for it.

Something caught my eye. It was Nepeta, caught in the debris. I thought she was dead, but hey, I thought I was dead. I limped over to her, my suit panicking due to the various problems (high oxygen, low air, low pressure, giant metal spike in my torso) I was dealing with. Nepeta was breathing, but there was no way I would’ve been able to drag her back to the Hab. I cut her loose from the antenna in her arm and shook her awake. After several moments of confusion I managed to get her up. We stumbled into the hab, delirious and injured, but alive.

After we got back inside, we fixed up our injuries and then sat down to think. 

Let me just say again, fuck Mars.

I’ll think about how to survive tomorrow. Right now I’m too tired to think.


	3. Chapter 3

SOL 10

After a careful reassessment of priorities, we decided to focus on fixing the goddamn radio, but that was a complete wash. Three days and several EVA CO2 filters later, there’s no sign of the actual communications dish (which was snapped off when we came to), and the other antennas are a tangled mess with broken parts all over. It’d almost be more effective to just… fuckin’ shout at Earth. 

See, we have to ration our EVAs as well as food. CO2 filters can’t be cleaned, so once we run out of those, we’re fucked in the EVA department. We’ll still be able to do them, but the suits will have to bloodlet the whole time. Not good. The good news is that NASA assumed a five-hour EVA per day per crew member, and CO2 filters are light, so they sent extra. All told, we each have about 1500 hours of EVA time. 1500 hours may sound like a lot, but we’re faced with spending at least 4 years here if there’s going to have any hope of rescue, with a minimum of several hours per week dedicated to sweeping off the solar array. Anyway. No needless EVAs.

I still have no idea what we’re gonna do about food. What in the fuck am I supposed to do about food? We have to get three year’s worth. Three years. I mean, if there was a way to generate food using rover parts and fuel cells, I’d be at least a little useful. Not really helpful knowing mechanical engineering. Nothing’s broken!

Okay, it was a really bad idea to say that. Now the Karma Gods are going to be looking for ways to screw me over. 

I’m just going to end this log here before I say anything else stupid.

LEIJON

I’m starting to come up with an idea for food. My botany background may come in useful after all.

So, why send a botanist to Mars? It’s not exactly known for having a teeming abundance of flora. Or much of anything, really. 

That’s actually kinda inaccurate. Mars has some of the basic things you need for life, but most of the things are missing. Like bacteria. And oxygen. And water.

So that’s one of the reasons they sent me! They want to know if Martian soil is actually good for anything. The idea was, I’d get samples of Martian soil, and mix it with Earth soil, and then see if I could grow anything.

That’s why I have a small amount of Earth soil and some seeds. 

Okay, I can’t get too excited. It’s enough to fill one garden planter, maybe. And the seeds aren’t crops, they’re grasses. Some of the easiest-to-grow plants, but regrettably inedible. So I have two problems: nothing to grow, and not enough soil to grow it in. 

SOL 10 (II)

I have an idea, but it’s not pleasant. Better than starving to death, but not pleasant. 

All the bacteria we need to get viable soil can be found in human waste. If we add that to the Earth soil and a ton of Martian soil, we should be able to produce viable Martian crop soil! 

 

I went through all our food, and found some good news- Thanksgiving is in a few days! Now, normally this isn’t a huge comfort to people who are stranded on Mars. But we have twelve whole potatoes with us. It’s really freakin’ lucky for us that they aren’t freeze-dried or mulched. Why did NASA send 12 whole potatoes, refrigerated but not frozen? And why send them along with us as in-pressure cargo rather than in a crate with the rest of the Hab supplies? Because Thanksgiving was going to happen while we were doing surface operations, and NASA’s shrinks thought it would be good to make a meal together. Not just to eat it, but to actually prepare it. There’s probably some logic to that, but who cares?

Okay, I do. Psychology is probably the coolest science ever (except for botany). One of the reasons they let me on was my interest in psychology. With the whole theme of the Leo program being “let’s see how long humans can survive without killing each other,” they thought it’d be useful to have a few social scientists on board.

It’s really proving useful now.

I should probably tell Karkat about my plan. He’s going to want to know about it, since it’ll take most of the Hab floor.

VANTAS

So the way to not die is to use our own shit as fertilizer. I’m trying to contain my enthusiasm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise surprise! I realized I had a decent break point and decided to upload part of the story that didn't require much rewriting. It's shorter, I know, but Chapter 3 was freakin' huge before this. Chapter 4 will be up as soon as I finish the rewrites. I've been making pretty good progress.


	4. Chapter 4

SOL 12

LEIJON

This is the actual worst, and we haven’t even started using our “fertilizer” yet. 

I mean, even in Mars’s lower gravity, soil is fucking heavy. We’re a couple of 16-year-old kids. We need about ten cubic meters of Martian soil to cover the floor of the Hab. I don’t know how heavy it is exactly, but the point is that it’s really really fucking heavy. It’s gonna take weeks of work to move all this shit inside!

Speaking of shit… Well, it’s a good thing we used plastic sheeting to keep our living area separate from the “garden.” The “fertilizer” is in a bucket on the other side of the garden, with a lid on, duct-taped shut. It still reeks in there.

We had to do an EVA to get the bags of dried shit from before the crew left out of the toilet. That toilet freakin’ destroys whatever you put in it, completely dehydrates it and kills all the bacteria. They’ll come back once it’s… refreshed. Let me just say, out of getting speared, left on Mars, and having to perform surgery on myself, that was the worst part of this week.

SOL 13

VANTAS

I wonder how the Cardinals are doing.

SOL 15

LEIJON

One complication I hadn’t though of: Water.

Turns out being on the surface of Mars for a few million years eliminates all the water in the soil. My experience in botany makes me pretty sure plants need wet dirt to grow in. Not to mention the bacteria that has to live in it first.

 

The good news is that we have water. I mean, otherwise, we’d be really screwed. However, it’s not as much water as I want. To be viable, soil needs 40 liters of water per cubic meter. My overall plan calls for about 10 cubic meters of soil. So I’ll eventually need 400 liters of water to feed it.

The Hab has an excellent Water Reclaimer. It can break down all waste water- that’s part of why the Toilet of Doom dehydrates everything- and make it clean and fresh again. Best technology available on Earth. So NASA figured “why send a lot of water up there? Just send enough for an emergency.” Humans need 3 liters of water per day to be comfortable. They gave us 50 liters each. There are 400 liters total in the Hab.

So I have to figure out how to make water. It’s not like I can just stick a little card into a slot and poof a bottle of water into existence, so I guess I’ll have to figure something out. Maybe Karkat can help with that? I don’t know. He was always helping with the mechanical stuff aboard ship. That was his mission speciality, mechanical engineering. I hope he knows how to make water.

VANTAS

I might be useful after all!

It turns out there’s not enough water in the Hab to grow our crops, so we have to get more. Our options are to drive to the north pole and melt some, or make it ourselves. Since driving to the north pole would take days, and I don’t want to deal with Martian Santa, we’re going to have to make it ourselves. Fortunately, I know the recipe. Take hydrogen, add oxygen, burn. And as we all know, nothing bad has ever happened in human history as a result of burning hydrogen. I’ve started working on some design ideas to keep it controlled, but working with fuckall resources is really fucking obnoxious. Another problem is that nothing burns in the Hab, and I am not sparking the hydrogen myself.

This should be a fun challenge. No better motivator for creativity than certain death.

SOL 17

LEIJON

I’ve been doing the math, and even with the potato yield we’ve calculated, there isn’t enough to keep us from starving. We need more farmland, and there isn’t any more space in the Hab, unless we cover the entire floor in dirt. Bad plan. We don’t have any way to treat an infection, if one of us gets one, and walking around in human shit isn’t exactly sanitary. Not to mention eating around it and breathing in the fumes constantly.

We only need a little more space to survive. It doesn’t have to be a lot. I can increase our yield by giving attention to each individual plant. And as their flowering bodies breach the surface, I can replant them deeper, then plant younger plants above them. For normal potato farmers, it’s not worth doing because they’re working with literally millions of potato plants.

Also, this sort of farming annihilates the soil. Any farmer doing it would turn their land into a dust bowl within 12 years. It’s not sustainable. But who gives a fuck? We just need to survive four years.

SOL 18

The pop-tents! The emergency pop-tents on the rovers! Each of the rovers has two 10-meter emergency pop-tents, and if we deploy those, we can get 40 extra meters of farmland. It isn’t quite enough to get us all the way to Sol 1412, when Leo IV lands, but it’s enough to at least keep us alive past Sol 320, so that’s nice. I’ve done the calculations, and using my farming tactics on the potatoes and all 140 farmable meters, in addition to carefully rationing the food (which buys us another hundred days), we should be able to make it to at least Sol 550.

That’s a good start, anyway.

SOL 22

VANTAS

I’ve begun making water. Took me a while to figure it out, but I have a method now.

You need hydrogen and oxygen to make water, and I have enough of neither of them in the Hab to make all the water we need. 

Let’s take them one at a time. I’ll start with oxygen.

Obviously, we have oxygen with us. There are two high-pressure tanks in the Hab, each with 25 liters of liquid O2. That’s all we have, not including the air in the Hab. The Hab itself would only use the tanks in an emergency; it has the Oxygenator to balance the atmosphere. The O2 tanks are for the spacesuits and the rovers.

Anyway, the reserve oxygen would only be enough to make 100L of water (50L of O2 makes 100L of molecules that only have one O each). That would mean no EVAs for us, and no emergency reserves. And it would make less than half the water we need. Out of the question.

But oxygen’s easier to find on Mars than you might think. No, you can’t walk around without a spacesuit, because it’s all CO2. It makes up 98% of the atmosphere. And I happen to have a machine whose sole purpose is liberating oxygen from CO2. Yay Oxygenator!

One problem: The atmosphere is very thin (shocker, I know). About 1/90th the pressure on Earth. Getting air from outside to inside is nearly impossible. The whole purpose of the Hab is to keep that sort of thing from happening. The tiny amount of Martian atmosphere that enters when one of us uses an airlock is laughable.

That’s where the MAV fuel plant comes in.

My crewmates took the MAV away weeks ago. Damn. But the bottom half of it stayed behind. Yay! It left the whole bottom of the ship behind, which includes the fuel plant. Remember how the MAV made its own fuel with help from the Martian atmosphere? Step one of that is to collect CO2 and store it. Once we get that hooked up to the Hab, it’ll give us half a liter of liquid CO2 per hour, indefinitely. After 5 days it’ll have made 125L of CO2, which will make 125L of O2 after I feed it through the Oxygenator.

That’s enough to make 250L of water. So we have a plan for oxygen.

The hydrogen will be a little trickier. 

In case you’ve never heard, hydrogen likes to explode. It’s why this big blimp (technically a zeppelin) called the Hindenburg had a... _problem_ , and also why the US and the Russians had a tense relationship during the 1960s. It’s also hard to find on Mars.

I often talk about the MAV. But now I want to talk about the MDV.

The MDV is basically a tin can with some thrusters attached to it and some parachutes on top. During the second-most terrifying sequence of my life, Tavros Nitram took me, Nepeta, and our five other crew members from Martian orbit to the surface in said tin can. He’d trained for this for years, and he did his job extraordinarily well. He exceeded all plausible expectations of landings, putting us just nine meters from the target. The guy just plain owned that landing.

Thanks, Nitram! You might have just saved my life!

Not by landing us so well, but by using up so little fuel while doing it. Hundreds of liters of unused Hydrazine. Each molecule of Hydrazine has four hydrogen atoms in it. So each liter of Hydrazine has enough hydrogen for **two** liters of water.

I did a little EVA today to check. The MDV has 292L of juice left in the tanks. Enough to make a almost 600L of water! Way more than we need!

There’s just one catch: Liberating hydrogen from Hydrazine is… well… it's how rockets work. In case you were unaware, when a rocket takes off, it shoots fire out of the bottom and explodes you into space. When you liberate hydrogen from Hydrazine, it creates heat. Heat and hydrogen do not play nice. If I do it in an oxygen atmosphere, the heat and newly liberated hydrogen will explode. There’ll be a lot of H2O at the end, but we’ll be too dead to appreciate it.

So I designed a little plastic tent with a chimney on top. I had to sacrifice a spacesuit to get some of the materials for the chimney (and a valve for the hydrazine), but we have plenty of spacesuits. We put it together this morning, and I’m gonna fire it up tomorrow. I need rest, it’s been a long day of thinking and moving dirt into the pop-tents. NASA was not fucking around with those tents, man. We hit the button to deploy and they were up in two seconds.

Also, I found Commander Harley’s personal data stick. Hopefully there’s some good music on it.

SOL 22 (II)

Disco. God damn it, Harley. 

SOL 23

This might be my final entry. 

I’ve known since Sol 6 there was a good chance I’d die here. But I figured it would be when I ran out of food. I didn’t think it would be this early.

I’m about the fire up the Hydrazine. Nepeta’s taking cover outside. If I blow myself up, hopefully it won’t burst the Hab and she’ll be able to survive for at least a little while longer. 

She’s kinda cute, but whatever. I’m a colossal dork, and we’re stuck on Mars with not enough food and no way to contact Earth. Not exactly the ideal situation for a relationship.

We were the lowest ranking members of the mission. I’d only be in command if everyone else was gone.

What do you know? I’m in command.

I mean, technically, it’s joint command, but whatever.

Anyway, this is how my water machine works. I stole the reaction chamber and the hydrazine from the MDV, and put them in my little plastic tent/bag thing. I turn the valve, the hydrazine drips into the reaction chamber, and up it floats as hydrogen and nitrogen. There’s a controlled amount of oxygen in the tent, which mixes with the hydrogen, and then is sent up the chamber.

Then I had to invent fire. 

NASA spent a lot of time making sure that nothing in the Hab is flammable, because of the whole “fire in space makes everyone dead” thing. So nothing burns, with the notable exception of Nitram’s personal effects. He brought along a small wooden crucifix, so now I have some wood!

Sorry, Tav. Shouldn’t’ve left me on Mars if you didn’t want me wrecking your shit. 

There were plenty of wires and batteries around to make a spark. But you can’t just ignite wood with a small electric spark. So I collected ribbons of bark from local palm trees, then got a couple of sticks and rubbed them together to create enough friction to…

No, not really. I vented pure oxygen at the stick and gave it a spark. Fucker lit up like a match.

With my mini-torch in hand, I started a slow Hydrazine flow. It sizzled on the iridium and disappeared. Soon I had short bursts of flame sputtering from the chimney.

I really had to be careful about this. Hydrazine breaking down creates a lot of heat, so if I release too much at once all my hydrogen goes bang. But I’m being very careful.

Point is, the process worked!

Each Hydrazine tank holds a little over 50L, which would be enough to make 100L of water. I’m limited by my oxygen production, but I’m all excited now, so I'm willing to use half my reserves. Long story short, I’ll stop when the tank is half-empty, and I’ll have 50L of water at the end!

If we can keep this up, there’s hope we can grow enough potatoes to make it to Leo IV. Things are finally going our way. In fact, they’re going great! I have a chance to live after all!

SOL 27

I am fucked and I’m gonna die!

Okay, okay. I need to calm down. I’m sure one of us can figure out what to do about this.

I guess I should explain what happened. If this is my last entry, you’ll at least know why.

Over the past few days, we've been happily making water. It’s been going swimmingly. (See what I did there? “swimmingly”)

Nepeta figured out a way to double the speed at which the soil becomes useful, so in a few days we’ll have enough to plant. Things were looking great!

I even beefed up the MAV fuel plant compressor. It was very technical (I increased the voltage to the pump). So I’m making water even faster now. It would’ve only taken us about three days to get the 560 liters of water we need for our soil.

After my initial burst of 50L, I decided to settle down and just make it at the rate I get O2. I’m not willing to go below a 25L reserve. So when I dip too low, I stop dicking with Hydrazine until I get the O2 back up to well above 25L.

Important note: When I say I made 50L of water, that was an assumption. I didn’t *reclaim* 50L of water. We’d already partially filled the Hab with was extremely dry Martian soil that greedily sucked up a lot of the humidity. That’s where we want the water to go anyway, so I’m not worried, and I wasn’t surprised when the reclaimer didn’t get anywhere near 50L. Probably should’ve checked more carefully, (the Hab wasn’t even fucking filled yet!) but I was too busy being full of myself for inventing water. What a cool thing to invent.

I get 10L of CO2 every 15 hours now that I souped up the pump. I’ve done this process four times. My math tells me that, including my initial 50L burst, I should have 130L of water added to the system.

Well my math is a fucking liar!

Nepeta checked the reclaimer, and one of Maryam’s spacesuits that we repurposed as a water tank. There were only 70L in them both. Now, there is condensation on the walls and the dirt for the potatoes did suck up a lot of the moisture, but not enough to be _sixty fucking liters_. 

I couldn’t figure out what in the hell was going on, until Nepeta noticed that the oxygen tanks have been steadily gaining O2 for the past few days. That’s not a problem, the tanks are just doing their job. But it does mean I’ve been gaining O2 over time. Which means I’m not consuming it as fast as I thought.

At first, I thought “Yay! More oxygen! Now I can make water faster!” But then a more disturbing thought occurred to me.

The O2 I’m releasing should be reacting with the hydrogen, which combine and form the water. Makes perfect sense. So if we’ve been gaining O2, we’ve either been creating extra inside our lungs, or some of it isn’t reacting. Why?

The only possible explanation is I haven’t been burning all the released hydrogen. 

It’s really fucking obvious now, in retrospect. But it never occurred to me that some of the hydrogen just wouldn’t burn. Why? Because in mechanical engineering, you can assume a closed system. I mean, you shouldn’t, but you can, and I did. So some of the oxygen got past the flame and went on its merry way. Dammit, Jim, I’m a mechanical engineer, not a chemist!

Chemistry is messy, unlike engineering, so there's unburned Hydrogen in the air. All around us. Mixed in with the oxygen. It’s got the perfect environment to explode. All it has to do is wait for a spark so it can blow the fucking Hab up!

I panicked. Really a lot. Put on an EVA suit right away and gave my honest opinion to Nepeta: we should fucking run. And pray. Neptea calmed me down. She pointed out the rovers were both free of hydrogen, so we had at least a small safe area.

Once I realized she was right, and composed myself, I got a Ziploc-sized sample bag and waved it around a bit, then sealed it.

Then, a quick EVA to the rover, where we keep the atmospheric analyzers. Nitrogen: 22%. Oxygen: 9%. Hydrogen: 64%. 

_Sixty-four fucking percent._

We’ve been hiding here in the rover ever since.

It’s Hydrogenville in the Hab.

It’s very lucky it hasn’t blown. Even a small static discharge would have led to “Oh the humanity!”

So, we’re stuck in Rover 2. We can stay for a day or two, tops, before the CO2 filters from the rover and the spacesuits fill up. We have that long to figure out how to deal with this.

The Hab is now a bomb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is the chapter that got me dinged for plagiarism last time. Hopefully, I've reworked it enough to keep it from causing problems. I think I might ask for a beta reader/co-author at some point in the future to help make sure that updates aren't so incredibly far apart, and also to help me manage the issues with how much I've taken from the original text. Well, we'll see. Here's hoping.


	5. Chapter 5

SOL 29

We’re still cowering in the rover, but we’ve been thinking. Bouncing ideas off each other. I have what chemistry knowledge that comes with being an engineer (very little), and Nepeta has enough common sense to point out glaring flaws that I tend to overlook.

Hydrogen is dangerous because it tends to explode [citation needed], but it can only explode if there’s oxygen around [citation: my rocket didn’t blow up on the launch pad]. The good news is that the oxygenator in the Hab is very, very good at pulling O2 out of the air. So all we have to do is sabotage it a little bit (bwa ha ha!), and then it’ll pull all the oxygen out of the air and we can burn off all the hydrogen in controlled bursts. Seems like a great plan, except that bacteria need air to breathe [citation: we have to use our own shit as a source of bacteria because there aren’t any outside], and we don’t have 100 billion little spacesuits.

Well, it’s half a plan, anyway. Time for more of Commander Harley’s mind-numbing disco.

SOL 30

LEIJON

I think I have a way to make Karkat’s plan workable. 

Soil bacteria are used to winters. They get less active, and require less oxygen to survive. We can lower the Hab temperature to 1C, and they’ll nearly hibernate. This sort of thing happens on Earth all the time. They can survive a couple of days this way. If you’re wondering how bacteria survive long periods of cold on Earth, the answer is they don’t. Bacteria further underground where it’s warmer breed upward to replace the dead ones.

They’ll still need some oxygen, but not much. I think a 1% content will do the trick. That leaves a little in the air for the bacteria to breathe, but not enough to maintain a fire. So the hydrogen won’t blow up.

Thankfully, we didn’t have quite enough soil to plant, so the potatoes won’t die because of the cold. We can just leave them in the rover with the heater on. Thank god for solar panels.

So that’s the plan. First, drop the Hab temperature to 1C. Then reduce to O2 content to 1%. Then burn off the hydrogen with a battery, some wires, and a tank of O2.

Karkat keeps putting on Commander Harley’s disco music. I’m starting to doubt his sanity.

VANTAS

This sounds like a great plan with absolutely no chance of catastrophic failure at all. We are the safest people in the history of the human race. 

This is why NASA needs to strongly consider the chance that two children will be stranded alone in their bases, attempt to burn hydrogen to make water so they can grow potatoes, and then fill their Hab with hydrogen. Because I’m sure that’s happened at _least_ once.

Here goes nothing. If all goes well, I should be back in the Hab in a few hours.

SOL 31

So, I blew myself up. 

First we moved the potatoes, then dropped the temperature. Easy enough. While the temperature was falling, I started trying to hack into the oxygenator. No dice. Eventually, I had a bright idea. The regulator uses a different set of vents for air sampling than it does for the actual air separation. The air that gets freeze-separated comes in through a single large vent on the main unit. But it samples the air from nine small vents that pipe back to the main unit. That way it gets a good average of the Hab, and prevents one localized imbalance from throwing it off.

I taped up eight of the intakes, leaving only one of them active. Then I filled a plastic bag with pure O2 out of a small tank, and taped it over the regulator.

“Holy shit!” Said the regulator. “I had better pull out all this excess oxygen real quick!”

It started to do that extraordinarily well, so we put on gas masks with canned O2 so we could, you know, breathe. No need for spacesuits, right? The pressure was totally fine, we just needed O2. 

We waited for the O2 to get all the way down, then got to work. Little canister of oxygen, exposed wires, battery, voila! We had a small, controlled burn going. Beautiful. We were clearing out the Hab, and making more water at the same time!

It was all fine up until the explosion.

It was very bright, very hot, and very loud for a few seconds, and then I was suddenly on the other side of the room. 

My first thought was “Ow, the back of my head!” because I hit a table.

My second thought was “Ow, the front of my face!” because I fell over.

Then I thought “I’m dizzy” and started feeling for a head wound that, thankfully, wasn’t there. However, feeling my face revealed the problem. My oxygen mask was gone, which meant I was breathing, essentially, _pure fucking nitrogen._ I looked for something I could do. Mask gone, most of the empty spacesuits thrown around in the blast… but the one filled with water was still right where it was supposed to be. It hadn’t moved in the blast. It was heavy to start with and had a fuckton of water in it.

Rushing over, I quickly cranked on the O2 and stuck my head into the neck-hole (I’d removed the helmet long ago, for easy access to the water). I breathed a bit until the dizziness faded, then took a deep breath and held it.

Still holding my breath, I glanced over to the spacesuit and Hefty bag I’d used to outsmart the regulator. The bad news is I’d never removed them. The good news is the explosion removed them for me. Eight of the nine intakes for the regulator were still bagged, but this one would at least tell the truth.

Stumbling over to the regulator, I turned it back on.

After a two second boot process (it was made to start up fast for obvious reasons) it immediately identified the problem.

The low oxygen alarm blared throughout the Hab, but pretty quickly got the O2 back up to par. Nepeta was, thankfully, fine. She was farther from the center of the blast, and her mask stayed on. However, she’d hit her head on a cabinet. No bleeding, but she was out cold. After a few minutes, she came to and started swearing.

I noticed for the first time how burned our outfits were. We’d both put on several extra layers to deal with the cold, which proved useful when the hydrogen went boom. Also, glancing at the Hab’s main computer, I see the temperature rose to 15C. Something very hot and very explodey happened! Thank you for that helpful info, computer. You’ve really done a bang-up job.

Ha! Bang-up job. I didn’t even do that on purpose.

Anyway, that’s where I am now. Wondering what in the fucking shit happened.

After all that work and getting blown up, I’m really fuckin’ exhausted. Tomorrow I’ll have to do a million equipment checks and try to figure out what the fuck blew up, but for now I just want to sleep.

We’re in the rover again tonight. Even with the hydrogen gone, we’re a bit reluctant to hang out in a Hab that has a history of just fucking exploding for no reason. Plus, we can’t be sure there isn’t a leak.

This time, we brought a proper meal, and something to listen to that isn’t disco. I swear, Harley doesn’t have any music from after 1980.

===

EARTH- JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

Sollux Captor sighed and dropped his briefcase by his desk. There was a lovely view of Johnson Space Center outside. He put one hand to his forehead and rubbed his temples in an attempt to soothe his splitting headache. There were 47 emails in his inbox marked as urgent. They could wait. 

Today was the funeral service for Nepeta Leijon and Karkat Vantas. 

The president had given a speech about their bravery and skill, and commending Commander Harley for getting the rest of the crew out alive. Commander Harley gave a stirring eulogy from the Hermes, and Eridan Ampora, the Director of NASA, gave a speech too. During preparation for the service, they’d asked Sollux if he was willing to make a speech. He’d declined. What was the point? The kids were dead. Nice words from the Director of Mars Missions wouldn’t bring them back.

There was a knock on his door.

“It’s open.” He sighed. Eridan walked in, looking very, very tired. 

“You doing ok?” He leaned up against the wall. Eridan was only 36, but he looked much, much older. Most people would look that way after dealing with the last few months. 

“I guess.” 

“You could have given a speech.”

“I didn’t want to. I suck at speeches. Lisp and all. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t want to, either. But I’m the director of NASA. It’s kind of expected. You sure you’re ok?” He looked at Sollux. His eyes were bloodshot.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Sollux didn’t sound very convincing, but Eridan let it drop.

“Good,” He said, standing up. “Let’s get back to work, then.”

“Sure,” Sollux shrugged. “Let’s start with you authorizing my satellite time.”

Eridan leaned against the wall with a sigh. “This again.”

“Yes,” Sollux said. “This again. What is the problem?”

“Ok, run me through it. What, exactly, are you after?”

Sollux leaned forward. “Leo 3 was a failure, but we can salvage something from it. There’s a month of food and supplies up there, and a fully-functional Hab, probably. We’re funded for six Leo missions, but I bet we can get Congress to fund a seventh.” 

“I don’t know, Sol…”

“If the Hab popped, it’ll be obvious. Everything will be blown out. If not, everything inside is fine. The rovers will be fine, too. Think about it, Ed. We’ll be that much closer to the Mars colony.”

“Don’t call me Ed. And you aren’t the only guy who wants that satellite time, Sol. We have Leo 4 pre-supplies coming up. We need to focus those satellites on Schiaparelli.”

“I don't get it, Eridan. What's the problem here?” Sollux asked. “I’m talking about securing us another mission. We have 12 satellites in orbit around Mars, I’m sure you can spare one or two for a couple of hours. I can give you the windows for each one when they’ll be at the right angle for Leo 3 shots-“

“It’s not about satellite time, Sol,” Eridan interrupted.

Sollux froze. “Then… but… what…”

Eridan looked down. “We’re a public domain organization. There’s no such thing as secret or secure information here.”

“So?”

“Any imagery we take goes directly to the public.”

“Again: so?”

“The bodies of Nepeta Leijon and Karkat Vantas will be within twenty meters of the Hab. Maybe partially buried in sand, but still very visible, and tangled up and impaled on the communications array. Any images we take will show that.”

Sollux paused, then glared. “You’re afraid of a PR problem?”

“The media’s obsession with this whole mess is starting to die off. The memorial gave people closure. If we release those images, it’ll all flare up over again.”

“So?! What do you want me to do? They aren’t going to _decompose._ They’ll be up there forever!”

“Not forever.” Eridan sighed. “They’ll be covered by normal weather patterns within a year.”

“I can’t wait a year for this!” Sollux got to his feet.

“Why not? Leo 4 doesn’t even launch for another five years.”

Sollux took a deep breath and thought for a moment. 

“Ok, consider this,” he said. “Sympathy for the families is really high. Ares 7 could bring the bodies back. We don’t say that’s the purpose of the mission, but we make it clear that would be part of it. If we framed it that way, we’d get more support in Congress. But not if we wait a year. In a year, people won’t care any more.”

Eridan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Hmmm…”

SATELLITE CONTROL

Aradia Megido sighed, and brought her coffee cup to her lips. The all-night shift was _so freakin’ boring._ She thought monitoring the positions of satellites around Mars would be a lot more exciting than basically sending a bunch of emails with pictures on them to people and the occasional course adjustment. She sighed again.

“Master's degree in engineering, and what am I? In charge of an all-night photo booth.”

A notice popped up, alerting her that the next set of images was ready. She checked the name on the work order: Sollux Captor, director of Mars Operations. Posting the data directly to internal servers, she composed an email to Dr. Captor. As she entered the latitude and longitude of the image, she recognized the numbers.

“31.2°N, 28.5°W… Acidalia Planitia… Leo 3?”

Out of curiosity, she brought up the first of the 17 images.

As she suspected, it was the Hab site for Leo 3. Slightly ashamed of herself, she started looking for the dead bodies of Nepeta Leijon and Karkat Vantas. After a minute of fruitless searching, she gave up, half disappointed and half relieved. She moved on to perusing the rest of the image. The Hab was intact; Dr. Captor would be happy to see that. She guessed he was trying to use the intact Hab site to convince Congress to fund another mission.

She brought the coffee mug to her lips, then froze.

“Um…” she mumbled to herself. “Uhhh…”

Aradia grabbed her phone and looked up the number for the Leo mission hub.

“Hello? Hi, this is Aradia Megido in SatCon. I need the mission logs for Leo 3. Any idea where I can get them…? Uh huh, thanks.” 

She pulled up Commander Harley’s complete mission logs. After a moment of reading, she no longer needed the coffee to stay awake. She grabbed her phone again and dialed security.

“Hello, security? It’s Aradia Megido in SatCon. I need the emergency contact for Dr. Sollux Captor. ...Yes, the director of Mars operations. ...Yes, it’s an emergency.”

===

Sollux Captor walked into SatCon looking like someone operating on three hours of sleep. 

“You’re Aradia Megido?” He asked, looking mildly annoyed.

“Yeah.” She bit her lip and fidgeted slightly in her seat. “Sorry to drag you in at this hour.”

“I assume you have a good reason. This is about the images, right?” She nodded. “Is this about the bodies?”

“Um, well… actually, ah, no. No, it isn’t.” 

“Okay, let me see them.” He scanned the images thoughtfully. “Looks like the Hab’s in one piece. That’s good news. Solar array looks good. The rovers are ok, too. Main dish isn’t around. No surprise there. What’s the big emergency?”

“Um,” she said, touching her finger to the screen. “That.”

Below the Hab, next to the rovers, four white circles stood out against the red sand. “Hmm. Is that Hab canvas? Maybe it did blow out after all. No, all the stuff inside would be everywhere.”

Aradia struggled to keep calm. “They look like rover pop-tents.” her voice broke slightly on the last word.

Sollux’s brow furrowed. “Hmm. Commander Harley must have ordered them deployed during the storm as a back-up. Not a bad plan.”

“I read through the entire mission log. They never threw out the tents.”

“They must have forgotten to put it into the log.”

“They deployed four emergency tents and never told anyone?”

“They had to have been deployed somehow. The wind must have jostled the rovers around and caused the tents to deploy.” 

“And I suppose the wind detached the tents and lined them up next to each other thirty feet away?” She paused to recollect her thoughts. “And the solar farm. The panels have been cleaned. After that storm, they should be covered with sand.”

“A good wind could’ve done it.”

Aradia paused. Her voice caught in her throat. “Did I mention that I never found the bodies?”

The pieces fell into place in Sollux’s mind. The realization floored him. He sat back in his chair, stunned. 

“Oh…” He said quietly. “Oh my god.”

===

“Fuck! You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Vriska Serket, the Director of Media Relations, was having a bad night.

“How sure of this are we, Sol?” Said Eridan. The Director still looked half-asleep. His headache had gotten worse, too.

“Almost 100%,” Sollux said as calmly as possible. Eridan rubbed his face. Things kept getting worse.

“Fuck!” Vriska said.

“Not helping, Vriska.”

“Do you have any idea the magnitude of shitstorm this is gonna’ be?” She retorted.

“One thing at a time,” Eridan said. “Sol, what makes you sure they’re alive?”

“For starters, no bodies.” Sollux explained. “Also, the pop-tents are set up. And the solar cells are clean. You can thank Aradia Megido in SatCon for noticing all that, by the way.” Eridan took a deep breath, and Vriska collapsed into a chair. 

“But,” Sollux continued, “the bodies could have been buried in the Sol 6 storm. The pop tents might have autodeployed and wind could have blown them around. A 30km/h windstorm some time later would be strong enough to clean the solar cells but not strong enough to carry sand. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.” He took a deep breath, then continued. “So I spent the last few hours checking everything I could. Commander Harley had two outings in Rover 2. The second was on Sol 5. According to the logs, after returning, she plugged it into the Hab for recharging. It wasn’t used again, and 13 hours later they evac’d.”

He slid a picture across the table to Eridan. “That’s one of the images from last night. As you can see, Rover 2 is facing away from the Hab. The charging port is in the nose, and the cable isn’t long enough to reach.”

Eridan frowned. “She must have parked it facing the Hab or she wouldn’t have been able to plug it in,” he said. “It’s been moved since Sol 5.”

“Yeah,” Sollux said, sliding another picture to Eridan. “And there’s still more. In the lower right of the image you can see the MDV. It’s been taken apart.”

“Could it be wind damage? The storm was strong enough to rip apart the communications array, it could’ve--”

“No. The MDV was basically sealed. There’d have to be a massive impact to cause that kind of damage. There’s no indication something of that size hit it, and besides, the parts are organized. It was intentionally disassembled. There’s no reason to do that unless you need parts, and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have done that without telling us. And the clincher is on the right of the image.” Sollux pointed. “The landing struts of the MAV. Looks like the fuel plant has been completely removed, with considerable damage to the struts in the process. There’s just no way that could have happened before liftoff. It would endanger the MAV way too much for Harley to allow it. Not to mention there being, again, no conceivable reason to do it, unless you need the plant for something.” He looked Eridan dead in the eyes. “There’s too much proof.”

“Hey, geniuses. I’ve got an idea,” Vriska interrupted. “We can just go to CAPCOM and ask Harley ourselves.” Sollux looked to Eridan, who sighed and turned to Vriska.

“We can’t tell them. If one or both of the kids are still alive, we don’t want them to know.” 

“What? Why the fucking hell not?” 

“Because,” Sollux explained, “they’re still in space. They felt awful about the kids dying, but imagine how they’ll feel if the crew finds out they left them.”

After a pause, Eridan spoke up. “Is it one or both of them still alive?”

Sollux thought for a moment. “It’s probably both. Both bodies are missing, and there’s no reason that one would move the other.”

“Suppose whichever one survived buried the other’s body?” 

“It’s possible, but that’d be a huge waste of energy. And that fuel pump is heavy and awkwardly shaped. I doubt one sixteen-year-old could move it alone.” He thought for a second. “If I had to guess, though, if it was only one… It’s probably Karkat. He’s the engineer, which would explain why the MDV and MAV are all taken apart. But if we have to let the public know, say it’s both.”

“I have to go public with this. It’s going to be fucking insane.”

“No,” said Eridan. “You won’t. I’ll make the announcement.”

===

“Good morning,” Eridan said to the room full of reporters. “Thank you all for coming here. Now, there is no easy way to say what I’m about to say. We have very little information, so I will not be taking questions at this time.” He shuffled his notes, then looked out at the reporters and braced himself. “We have obtained new imagery from Mars that gives us reason to believe that Karkat Vantas and Nepeta Leijon are still alive.”

There was a deafening silence while everyone processed what Eridan had said. Two seconds later, the room erupted with noise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! The sheer volume of editing that this chapter required-- I've been working on it since August-- has convinced me that finding a beta reader/co-author is both necessary and prudent. So I'm officially looking for one! I do have the whole story mostly planned out, so there's that. Of course, please only apply if you  
> A: Ship Katnep.  
> B: Have seen or read the Martian by Andy Weir.  
> C: Have some form of writing experience.  
> Also: Please, for the love of god, leave comments! I'm a sad, lonely person and comments make me feel better about my life. Also kudos are nice. /oh god i'm so lonely/
> 
> Next chapter will be up shortly! It requires ~0 editing. See you soon!


	6. Chapter 6

SOL 32

I have an idea of why we exploded. 

See, when we were getting ready to burn the hydrogen, we didn’t put on full spacesuits. We just used oxygen masks. What I didn’t account for was that you don’t use up 100% of the O2 you breathe in. You exhale a lot of it, and there isn’t an airtight seal around the mask. So me and Nepeta were venting excess O2 into the Hab every time we exhaled. 

That explains why. Now we need to make sure nothing got damaged except my pride.

LEIJON

I had a very scary thought today. 

What if Congress cancelled Leo IV because of us “dying?” If the Leo program ends, we will be so epically screwed it won’t even be funny anymore. We won’t know anything about it, either.

Even worse news: Karkat’s obsession with Commander Harley’s disco collection is growing worse. 

SOL 35 

We planted the potatoes today! 140 meters of farmland, happy and growing. With food taken care of, we sort of lost focus. Karkat found out that Commander Harley also brought a bunch of shitty 70’s TV shows, so that’s been our entertainment.

Which confuses me. Like, why doesn’t he use his own drive, or ask to use mine? Does he have some kind of weird crush on Jade?

Freud was right. Damn it. I hate that guy.

VANTAS

Nepeta has started looking at me funny. I don’t know why.

===

ACIDALIA PLANTILLA

TWO DAYS LATER

The song “Stayin’ Alive” played through the speakers in what Karkat liked to think of as a motivational boost. Sort of a musical reminder of the end goal. Karkat was currently staring at the wall and despising everything about his current situation. He didn’t really have anything to do, with there being no life-stopping crises or urgent survival matters to attend to now that the farm was set up.

Nepeta looked up from where she was decorating the Hab wall on the inside of her bunk with markers.

“Okay, I tried to ignore it, but I have to ask. What the fuck is with all the disco?”

Karkat sighed dejectedly. “I lost my drive. All of Rose’s stuff is in French, Kanaya has a bunch of psychology shit, John brought medical junk, and Tavros’s is 90% rap. This is what will drive me to insanity the slowest out of all of those.”

“What about Roxy’s?”

“I couldn’t find it, but I know that it’s almost all musical soundtracks.” Karkat made a face.

Nepeta held up her personal flash drive. “What about classic rock?”

Karkat sat bolt upright. “Oh my fucking god, why did you not speak up sooner? I was about to fucking explode.”

“I just thought you had some kind of weird disco fetish. Dammit, now I don’t get to psychoanalyze you.” Nepeta made a joke sad face. “Tell me about your mother. Did she have a particular affinity for disco?”

Karkat snickered, then took the flash drive from her. “What’s on it? I mean, what counts as classic rock? I swear, if it’s all death metal…”

“Yes. It’s all death metal.” Nepeta kept her voice completely flat. “Well, about eighty percent death metal. The rest is all psychological French rap musicals.”

“Ha, ha. Seriously.”

“Alternative rock. Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, Onerepublic… you know, 2010s stuff.” She paused, and blushed a little. “Also, maybe a few Taylor Swift songs…”

“I can’t judge. My brother _loves_ Taylor, and I can’t say that I don’t like her music…” he grinned sheepishly. 

“Seriously?!” 

“Fuck. You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?”

“Nope.”

===

SOL 38

VANTAS

Nepeta has turned out to be a godsend. I mean, I was going to be stuck listening to disco for the next four years, and she produced a drive full of _really fucking good_ music. And it has a bunch of romcoms on it too, so I don’t have to rewatch Happy Days or Dukes of Hazzard. 

And she also saved my fucking life by knowing how to grow plants on Mars. Also a major thing she did.

Note to future astronauts: if you get stranded on Mars, make sure that Nepeta Leijon is there to give you backup. You will need her help.

SOL 40

Okay, I am so fucking bored. Like, we have the romcoms. They’re awesome, but I need something to _do._

At least when we were this close to dying all the time, I was busy, damn it! All we do anymore is lay around the Hab.

LEIJON

Let me just restate how thankful I am that Karkat’s intense disco boner was just a misunderstanding. I really like the guy, but there are just some things that you can’t overlook in a crush.

You heard me right. I’m just gonna go ahead and call it a crush. That’s what it is, no use denying it. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t count as my commanding officer or anything stupid like that. So there shouldn’t be anything in the way of our relationship except for A) I’m pretty sure he thinks we’re just friends and B) Mars. 

I am really really glad he’s in the shower and can’t hear me right now. Why can’t he hear me, even though the shower is basically in the same room? Because he’s singing. 

ANYWAY.

Karkat’s been talking about what we should do next (which was the original point of this log!), and I’ve been thinking. All my ideas involve trying to repurpose our spare Hab canvas to build a greenhouse. I really don’t think any of them are viable options, though. 

VANTAS (II)

I had an idea while I was in the shower. We’ll need to retool the rover for it, but it has some very awesome payoffs if it works. I don’t want to tell you just yet. It’ll be a surprise!

Surprises are bad on Mars, but fuck it. Whatever.

===

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

“I’m getting sick of daily press conferences,” Sollux said.

“I’m getting sick of hourly press conferences,” Vriska countered.

“Sorry I’m late,” Eridan said as he walked into the crowded press room, out of breath. Managers from every department stood shoulder to shoulder in the back, while reporters crammed the pit.

Eridan pulled some flash cards from his pocket, then cleared his throat.

“In the nine days since announcing the survival of Nepeta Leijon and Karkat Vantas, we’ve received a massive show of support from all sectors. We’re using this shamelessly every way we can.”

A small chuckle cascaded through the room.

“Yesterday, at our request, the entire SETI network focused on Mars. Just in case the kids were sending a weak radio signal. Turns out they weren’t, but it shows the level of commitment everyone has toward helping us.

“The public is engaged, and we will do our best to keep everyone informed. I’ve recently learned CNN will be dedicating a half-hour segment every weekday to reporting on just this issue. We will assign several members of our Media Relations team to that program, so the public can get the latest information as fast as possible.

“We have adjusted the orbits of three satellites to get more view time on the Leo 3 site, and hope to catch an image of one of them outside soon. If we can see them outside, we will be able to draw conclusions on their physical health based on stance and activities.

The reporters began to wave their hands enthusiastically. Eridan sighed and pointed at one of them.

"Has there been any evidence to suggest that only one of the children is still alive, or that they might both be dead?"

"Of course not. We still believe that both of them are alive, and there has been nothing to suggest that either of them has been harmed in any way since the storm." Eridan's face flushed, and he groaned internally. The media kept trying to paint Nepeta and Karkat as kids who'd been wronged somehow, that the incompetent NASA officials had sent children on a mission that they weren't qualified for- despite the fact that Karkat and Nepeta had _both_ passed astronaut training easily. They knew the risks, and seemed to be taking pretty good care of themselves. But that wasn't as good of a story, so he knew that they'd keep trying to paint NASA as the villains- at least, until the kids were back on Earth.

“Do they have enough food?”

“We’ll be looking into that.”

“Have you made contact yet?”

“We’re working on it.” 

“Are you going to resign?”

“No,” Eridan responded flatly.

Sollux leaned over to Vriska. “I wonder what they’d think about all this.”

“I wonder what they’re thinking, period. Being alone up there, cut off from the world, thinking that everyone abandoned you… it’s gotta mess with you.” Vriska shivered a little. “Those poor kids. I wonder what they’re thinking right now.”

===

SOL 41

LEIJON

How can Aquaman control whales? They’re mammals! It makes no fucking sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of the old story! From here on in, you'll be getting 100% new, freshly-written, much better content. I have a lot of fun ideas to keep the story interesting. When you think about it, having someone stranded with you can be a great asset- as we've seen- but it can also cause problems. So the real question to ask: in a survival situation, would you rather be alone and experienced, or together and inexperienced? 
> 
> I know which one I'd pick. Anyway, don't expect this to follow the plot of the Martian exactly. Karkat and Nepeta are NOT Mark. They do not have his skills (I'd say common sense, but Mark doesn't exactly have a ton of that either). And some of the challenges he faces would just be too damn easy with two people (and some would be impossible for teenagers), so I'm gonna mix it up a little. 
> 
> Also, this story is going to include romance- eventually. In canon, Karkat and Nepeta are not the most forward characters when it comes to emotion, and Mars is not conducive to romance. But people are people, and when someone spends a lot of time around you and has similar interests, you'll probably be drawn to them. 
> 
> To sum up: this is gonna be one hell of a ride for everyone involved. I can't wait. See you on the next update!


End file.
